The groups are intended to support the Social Policy Association in advancing research, teaching and dissemination in the field of Social Policy. In particular, the groups work collaboratively to review policy developments in key policy areas (both in the UK and internationally), organise events to stimulate academic and public debates, form the basis of networks to bring together SPA members, and produce materials for social policy students and teachers.

To accelerate understanding within the context of social policy, the Social Harm Policy Group will seek to:

1. Advance knowledge of social harm in relation to contemporary societal issues while disrupting presumptive narratives that underplay the importance of structural/major change and proposing the development of responses that prioritise social justice and optimise social welfare;
2. Foster collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-cutting research activities that work towards bringing scholars from other disciplines (including but not limited to social policy, economics, public health, geography, sociology, economic anthropology, law, toxicology and medicine) around a range of common interests;
3. Create pedagogical resources for teachers, researchers, and students across the UK which employ interactive, reflective, and experiential methods;
4. Provide opportunities to cascade research and knowledge beyond academia to enhance the effectiveness of governmental and nongovernmental organisations in dealing with pressing social harms.

Nasrul Ismail, Lecturer in Criminology, said,

“We are excited to establish the Social Harm Policy Group with the Social Policy Association. Building upon the social harm perspective that was pioneered by academics in the School for Policy Studies nearly 25 years ago, our Policy Group will use the lens of social harm to examine today's grand societal challenges that are influenced by inequality and social injustice.

“Working together for the next two years with 11 colleagues from Birmingham, Durham, York, Oxford and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Social Policy group will foster collaborative research activities, create pedagogical resources and cascade knowledge beyond academia to enhance the effectiveness of both governmental and nongovernmental organisations in dealing with pressing social harms that impact our community, in the UK and beyond.”

The context for the establishment of the group:

More than 46 million people in the UK–some nine in ten adults–reported that their cost of living had increased in 2023 (Office for National Statistics, 2023). Sharp increases in energy and food prices, flatlining incomes which have not increased at the rate of inflation over a sustained period of time, and no significant governmental macroeconomic effort to mitigate these impacts have combined to make people progressively poorer in real terms. Similarly, a continual assault on human rights has become normalised through empowering police to restrict protest and by limiting individual rights for judicial review regarding social security and immigration tribunal decisions. This has occurred alongside a wider intention to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with a weaker Bill of Rights. Globally, 110 million people are now displaced due to war and political instability (European Commission, 2023) yet many countries have tightened their borders against refugees from these communities, the UK included.

Cumulatively, these and similar phenomena exemplify social harm on a mass scale, and demonstrate the intensification of social and economic inequalities and injustice. In practice, however, these issues are commonly examined in isolation with individualistic responses being prioritised and no connections being made to the wider cultural and international political economic contexts which have historically shaped and currently sustain them. Responses neither satisfy the duty of care that one owes to others and future generations nor provide accountable forms of governance. 

Social harm is both a conceptual tool and meta-analytical approach that combines the examination of otherwise ostensibly separate social phenomena by connecting them to underlying structural and cultural factors. In so doing, it naturally contests legal definitions of ‘crime’ by emphasising injurious acts committed by political and economic elites which are not necessarily illegal (Hillyard and Tombs, 2004; Pemberton, 2015). Serving as a vehicle for advocating positive change, the social harm frame of reference usefully underlines unfairness, injustice, inequality, indifference, and exclusion. Scrutiny of inequality and social injustice is incomplete if they are not linked systematically to consequential social harm.

This group belongs to a tradition of social policy scholarship which seeks to push the boundaries of social policy. Linking social harm to the discipline of social policy emphasises the importance of improving welfare through social actions. It also furthers our understanding of the social contexts that determine harmful activities, and our ability to identify redress for these events (Pemberton, 2007). Social harm illuminates state ideological preference and corporate behaviour–central foci in social policy–whilst engaging with the question as to why social policies can become anti-social when they are unable to achieve their more benevolent intentions (Squires, 1990). As disciplinary boundaries become more porous, social harm becomes a more mainstream lens–both explicitly and implicitly–across a wide variety of fields.